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From: gl8f@astsun8.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.073118.23429@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 90 07:31:18 GMT
References: <1980@mts.ucs.UAlberta.CA> <18016@hydra.gatech.EDU> <16671@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Lines: 49

In article <16671@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser) writes:

>Would someone care to enlighten me as to why he or she thinks that C has
>a difficult syntax and is difficult to learn?

Well, I found C much more difficult than Fortran, mainly because
Fortran is totally trivial and with C you actually have to think about
declaration verses allocation and worry a bit more about your
pointers. Can't just turn on bounds checking to find goof-ups in
loops. This isn't a major barrier to me, but I definately think
Fortran is easier to learn, given that your problem fits what Fortran
can do.

>	(a) C provides (via pointers and recursive functions) the
>		ability to construct elaborate recursive data
>		structures and the ability to traverse them.

The programs I write these days don't need either.

>	(b) A few C constructs resemble constructs in other
>		languages but are not the same.

C control structures have never bothered me.

>	(c) C doesn't provide run-time array bounds checking
>		and some other safety features. I just don't
>		see that this is that important. Surely it
>		can be avoided by careful coding, and systems
>		like Saber-C are available to do this at
>		least at development time. But in any case,
>		it isn't a syntax issue.

It's sometimes very important during debugging. I don't own a copy of
Saber C and I can't always afford the huge performance hit that it
gives. Even if I had Saber C on one machine, I develop on a
half-dozen (not that odd for an academic environment), and I don't
have any money to spend on software. So I find it quite nice to have
optional bounds checking. (The FSF is coming out with a "free"
interpreter that will change the availablility situation, but it still
may not be that fast.)

All Joe/Jane Scientist wants is a simple language only complex enough
to solve the problem, and yet be highly optimized. He/She wants it to
be available on every machine, now and future, which s/he might use.
It should be standard issue on all hardware and used by all of his/her
friends.

That language doesn't exist. But some languages come closer than
others.


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